Are the salaries of the economic elite out of control and in need of regulation?
From my perspective:
Exec salaries are high because they need to compensate the execs for not being free to set up their own businesses which, if successful, could make them much wealtheir than any salary. A typical exec-candidate will be in a prime position to set up his own business: market knowledge, business experience, and a wealth of contacts. In fact, he will almost certainly have a bunch of peers who have done precisely that. The companies want execs with these skills and knowedge bases and need to make the exec position tempting compared to the entrepreneurial route.
I think the bull-markets of the late 90s and the dot-com boom were partially repsonsible for taking the above to a new level. There was stupid money around for those setting up tech companies, and the money you could making trading was equally staggering; the execs were looking relatively impoverished. I remember back then reading complaints concerning exec pay (~500,000) and thinking it odd that no-one knew what the real big salaries/bonuses were like (as in the traders making multiple million bonuses) So the exec remuneration started playing catch-up through the 2000s.